More Fiscal Cliff

Even before the current budget battle in Washington, there was anxiety over funding in San Diego’s biomedical research community, which received almost $800 million last year from the National Institutes of Health, the biggest public underwriter of such work.

Scientists were concerned that the percentage of grants approved by NIH has dropped from 30 percent to 18 percent over the past decade, largely because the agency’s budget has remained flat. In some areas, like structural biology, which is key to drug development, scientists have only a six percent chance of winning a grant.

The fiscal cliff could make the funding situation far worse. Everything depends on timing. If the government goes over the cliff for a short period, the impact would likely be minor. Most scientists who are funded by the NIH have multi-year grants, and most institutions have some discretionary money to cover scholars who hit money problems.

But researchers say they’ll suffer if the government goes over the cliff and stays there for a long time. The NIH could be forced to both sharply cut back on grants, and to provide smaller, shorter term awards when an application is approved.

Deep cuts also would affect employment, says John Reed, chief executive officer at the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute in La Jolla. He did an analysis in September that says the financial problems now facing the government could force NIH to cut its budget by 17 percent, ultimately costing San Diego $290 million and eliminating 3,000 jobs in the life sciences. Local economists said the job losses could be even higher.

“At a time when federal grant support for innovative medical research has never been more competitive, falling off the fiscal cliff would be an enormous set-back for Sanford-Burnham and other nonprofit organizations engaged in medical research throughout our nation,” Reed said last week.

“Just when prospects are incredibly bright for breakthroughs, our scientific community in America is falling behind in the race for cures. It’s a tragedy not only for patients in need, but also for our country’s prospects for economic development, given that biotechnology will be to the 21st century what information technology was to the last century.”